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Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Rex's recent reference to our favorite beer, Milwaukee's Best Light (MBL), has tweaked me to tell the rest of the story.

Way back in 1997,Wendy and I were sitting in the Calico Cat bar in Independence, Missouri. We collect "neighborhood" bars when we travel, avoiding the hotel and franchise bars as you seldom learn anything there about where you have traveled. This bar had a whole wall of doors to refrigerator space behind the bar and the doors were glass.

We were surprised to see MBL available for sale. We had thought, naively, that the beer was a regional thing, what with the name "Milwaukee" and all. An old patron overheard us talking and told us a story of buying a 12-pack of MBL and finding 5 cans of Miller Light in it. Well, we learned that MBL was a national brand with a very close tie to Miller Light.

This story actually involves our other brother, Neil. Years before, Neil worked at a big brewery in St. Paul while waiting to get into Veterinary School. He was in packaging quality control. I asked him about the 5 cans of Miller Lite in the MBL 12-pack. Neil told me that all major brands have a "second label" and MBL was Miller Light's second label.

Every batch of beer is started out with the same high quality goal in mind. Because of the consistent nature of the ingredients, almost all batches achieve that quality standard and get in the the "first brand" can. Occasionally, something goes wrong and a batch is a little off. That batch is mixed with 9 other "perfect" batches and gets sold as MBL. So there is, technically and potentially, a slight difference between "first" and"second" label. The shocker is that the errant "little off" batch comes along about once or twice a month, in Neil's memory.

Therefore (here is the punchline) about 95% of the time is is straight Miller Light in the MLB cans. The other 5% of the times it is so close in taste that I can't tell the difference. It is all bottled (or canned) on the same production line and thence the 5 cans that got misplaced.

The result is a product that is virtually the same as Miller Lite at consistently $5.00 less per case making it almost obligatory for all cheap ass Swiss people to drink it (except, strangely, Neil). There is, obviously, no difference in production cost, the difference is in advertising cost and less profit.

Thinking about the cheese business, about which I know a little bit more, there is an analogy. Every batch (or vat) starts out the same way, to make the best possible natural cheese. A few vats are "a little off". In the cheese business, this is sent to a factory where it is ground up and melted into a thing called processed cheese food. Velveeta is the prototype. We called the failed vats "grinders". My Dad refused to eat cheese food, as it was an admission of failure for a natural cheese maker. It is illegal to call cheese food by the name "cheese", as the cheese makers have seen to it that the public knows the difference by this name difference, which no one pays any attention to anyway.

Strange, He had no problem drinking a "second label" beer, however, and it was called Old Milwaukee. It may have even been a "third label" about which I know nothing and don't think I even want to know anything.

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